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Hedgehog Hall of Fame: de Winter PR - Pop the question in style

29th August 2013

Company: de Winter
Campaign: Pop the question in style
Category: Best use of Video - North - Shortlisted
Objective
• To raise the shopping centre’s profile nationally
• To attract a younger shopper audience (18 – 35)
Strategy & Target Audience
Our strategy was to create an online viral campaign that would appeal to 18 – 35 year olds and would also promote the centre’s offer to a wider geographical audience.
We chose Valentine’s Day as a theme and launched a competition inviting people to submit their ideas (in writing) for a perfect marriage proposal and the winner would have their dream proposal made a reality.
The special moment was to be caught on camera and distributed through digital and conventional channels, with You Tube playing a major role in the campaign.
Action
The competition launch featured the ‘Grosvenor Bridal Party’; a group of head turning ‘brides’ taking to the streets to spread the word of the competition. The brides took part in a photo shoot, handed out entry forms to shoppers and popped up at restaurants in their bridal attire to raise awareness of the centre and to promote the competition. Our local media partner, Chester Chronicle, also featured the competition entry form in print.
We created Facebook and Twitter profiles for this campaign and made national journalists excited about the 'big day' asking them to Tweet about our competition. Using journalists as key influencers to our viral campaign, word soon spread.
James Roberts, was selected as the winner and our team got to work creating the animal lovers’ dream marriage proposal. To ensure the campaign didn't remain regional, and to make the campaign accessible to national journalists de Winter formed a relationship with London Zoo to create a large scale stunt in one of the Zoo's newest attractions, Penguin Beach.
The couple entered the zoo before the gates opened to the public and at Penguin Beach James appeared, after 'pretending to go and help a zoo keeper', fully suited and booted with a pop-up string quartet playing the couple's favourite song. Just as James got down on one knee the cameras appeared.
Pre-event the idea caught the attention of ITV who were currently filming their documentary The Zoo so de Winter worked with them to catch the footage they needed needed for the documentary as well as setting up a 'caught-on-camera' moment of the zoo staff reactions to the proposal, creating perfect YouTube foder.
Results
• The campaign reached over 12 million people
• 21,568 YouTube views to date (and still growing)
• £75,200 coverage generated
• £70,200 ROI
• Online, print and broadcast coverage was gained
• Key coverage included Huffington Post, The Telegraph, Chat (exclusive full page interview), Heart, ITV.
• The video was streamed by The Telegraph, MSN News, AOL Videos, London Tonight, Metro Online and ITN News
• You & Your Wedding, Guides for Brides and County Wedding tweeted links to the competition and the YouTube page.
Huffington Post and The Telegraph streamed the film footage. Local radio stations, including Heart, interviewed the happy couple after the event and national magazine, Chat, ran an exclusive double page spread interview on the couple.
47 per cent of the centres social media following is 18 – 35 year olds; an audience they weren't previously communicating with, mainly because until this campaign the centre had no social media presence.
For the first time 70 per cent of the centres monthly coverage was national.
URLhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WE6WmUPDVc
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